Google is on a Roll with Renewable Energy

Since the beginning of 2010, we’ve watched Google turn into an increasingly regular investor in renewable energy technologies. This month alone, the search giant has had three major announcements that will lead to more clean megawatts on the grid.

We regularly evaluate the renewable energy investments of Google and other IT brands on the Cool IT Leaderboard. Google was a leader in this scoring area at the time of our last assessment (December 2010), and it looks like the company is putting forward plenty of examples to keep up the lead in 2011.

Google may be the most consistent of its IT peers, but it is not the only company to invest directly in clean energy. Microsoft announced a contract in February to buy wind power for a 22.2 megawatt capacity data center in Dublin, and Intel scored points on our last Leaderboard for its investments in cleantech firms, such as solar manufacturing. A few cloud hosting companies have also partnered with renewable energy providers or a utility to purchase clean energy directly for their operations.

Here’s a quick look at Google’s investments of the past two years, starting with the most recent:

This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities.

We need smart capital to transform our energy sector and build a clean energy future. This is our largest investment to date, and we’ve now invested over $250 million in the clean energy sector. We’re excited about Ivanpah because our investment will help deploy a compelling solar energy technology that provides reliable clean energy, with the potential to significantly reduce costs on future projects.

We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy. We’re willing to take calculated risks on early stage ideas and projects that can have dramatic impacts while offering attractive returns.

Buying renewable energy directly from the developer impacts the development of renewable energy projects in ways that are more meaningful than the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from third parties.

To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital... Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.

Google is not using renewable energy generated through these investments to directly power its infrastructure, but the company has hinted that the creation of Google Energy, its wholesale electricity purchasing subsidiary, makes it more feasible to procure clean energy for its own operations. We would still like to see Google increase its overall transparency, particularly regarding the company’s carbon footprint and energy demands.

Tomorrow at the Green:Net conference in San Francisco we will release a new report evaluating the good and bad energy choices that Google and its peers are making as cloud computing demands more and more electricity. Google is providing the rest of the sector with a number of good examples.

I was hoping someone knowledgeable at Greenpeace could comment on the use by Google, Apple, and other tech giants of renewable electricity credits (RECs) to be green. Are investments in renewable energy better than directly reducing a datacenter's/company's environmental footprint?